Toxic Tales How to Be Eaten By Maria Adelmann Little, Brown & Company


REVIEW BY HALLEY SUTTON


WHEN FIVE WOMEN—FORMER REALITY STARS, TRUE crime “tragedy celebs”—receive an email invitation shrouded in mystery and barely escaping a spam filter, they are given the opportunity to finally tell their own stories in a group therapy framework. But all is not as it appears. Each of the five women has a fantastic story to tell, pre-


sented in their own distinct voices in vignettes throughout the book. Plus-size Bernice barely survived the murder- ous attempts of her billionaire tech-bro boyfriend (think Elon Musk with a dyed cyan beard and a penchant for femicide), but no one really believes she wasn’t in on his crimes. Ruby literally wears her trauma in the form of a grotty animal-skin coat—a memento of the wolf she sur- vived (but that her grandmother didn’t). Ashlee was recently crowned the winner of another reality TV show, beating out 30 women on a series not unlike The Bachelor for a chance to marry Prince Charming—only this princess got the “villain edit.” Gretel’s eating disorder stems from a childhood incident in which she and her brother may or may not have been abducted by a woman with a house made of candy. And then there’s Raina. More regal and mysterious


than the rest, her tale of woe is both more private than those of the other women, and more intimately connected to their equally mysterious therapy facilitator, Will. If the archetypes are familiar or over the top, they’re


meant to be. How to Be Eaten is a moving, funny, big- hearted debut novel from a writer with a keen eye for social satire, and plenty of knives to sharpen on the altar of casual cultural misogyny. Adelmann reconfigures fairy- tale tropes to dive deeply into the power of narrative and serious questions about how to establish control over one’s own story. Within the group, the women define their trauma, figuring out ways to tell their own tales. But that process is freighted with their own layers of


ambivalence and trepidation. As Gretel says: “I believe sto- ries have a cumulative cultural effect. … But even that isn’t always positive. It depends on who’s telling the story.” Almost despite themselves—and certainly despite the


best efforts of Will, who purports to want to help but who, it becomes increasingly clear, can, at best, offer the thera- peutic skills of a college freshman taking Psych 101—the women start to bond with and understand each other. Like a millennial Angela Carter, Adelmann draws a provocative parallel between the flattening of women in


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fairy-tale tropes and the flat- tening of women who attract the media spotlight, be they trauma survivors or reality TV stars. As Ruby says when describing how media both highlights and distorts women’s stories: “It’s not like there’s a trial … except the trial of public opinion, which actually seems pretty immune to evidence.” Adelmann deftly illuminates the false premise at the


heart of both fairy tales and so-called reality television alike: that this is all just entertainment, with no morals attached. She shows how frequently we like to forget that this “entertainment” is still shaped to reflect a dominant worldview of women as either “good” (pure, unambitious, small, the perfect victim) or “bad” (loud, competitive, fat, a survivor), and how there’s always reinforcement of par- ticular morals hidden within them. If you interact with the wolf, you’ve brought destruction on yourself. Look at these crazy women, tussling over the hand of this one man—but look at the winner, what a princess she is! Late in the book, Bernice complains to Will: “You’re reframing this conversation the same way people reframe our stories. They shift the focus onto one little detail—like what choices we made— and miss the bigger picture.” The point is that the choices we make don’t justify the


harm another person—in the world of How to Be Eaten, a man or predator—perpetrates, a nuance frequently elided by clickable headlines. In addition to being a quick and delicious read,


Adelmann’s book offers lots of chewy insights about our chaotic current media landscape, and the cackling delight taken in superficial treatment of women by the press. Even better, How to Be Eaten is both poignant and laugh- out-loud funny—Ashlee, who speaks frequently in emojis and hashtags, has some truly excellent zingers. It’s the smartest, funniest satire of The Bachelor since the TV show unREAL. Adelmann masterfully makes the case that too often, our templates for modern womanhood come down from toxic fairy-tale models—and it’s long past time for our stories to change.


HALLEY SUTTON, author of The Lady Upstairs, is a writer and future Skee-Ball champ who lives in Los Angeles.


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